San Diego Attorney’s Environmental Lawsuits Could Be Tainted By Conflict Of Interest — with links

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A few minutes before 3 p.m. on Feb. 11, Cory Briggs, a well-known San Diego environmental lawyer, walked into his office for an interview with inewsource.

He placed his large, iced drink and cellphone on the conference table. A pile of documents rested in a corner of the room. Guitars, a dry-erase board and framed photos decorated the walls.

The wife of a high-profile lawyer who sues local governments over environmental violations held a key position in a company on the other side. The potential conflict of interest and its effect on the taxpayers has not been publicly known.

As a videographer for inewsource made final camera adjustments, one photo — of Briggs and his wife — caught the attorney’s eye. He took down the picture.

“I don’t put family on stuff,” he said.

That practice has proven successful. A review of a decade’s worth of news coverage about Briggs found no mention of his wife’s name. Similarly, newsprofiles of his wife didn’t mention him by name.

Ed McIntyre, an attorney who currently devotes his practice to legal ethics and professional responsibility and was named one of San Diego’s top lawyers in 2014, said the arrangement raises legal and ethical questions.

“I really think the situation just screams conflict of interest, not just for her but for him,” McIntyre said. “It gives him entreé into where they’re not complying, in a fashion that he really shouldn’t have.”

The news surprised San Diego business and government officials, as well as legal ethicists, and is now of great interest to some who have been his biggest targets over the years.

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“I think you’d have to be blind not to think that there’s something going on,” he said. “The only question is whether or not it violates any requirements of disclosure. If he’s filing lawsuits and using inside information, then the question is: is he doing something illegal?”

Briggs sued more than 20 municipalities and filed more than 100 lawsuits in the past decade, according to public records searches.

For months, inewsource has investigated his lawsuits and the projects his wife’s company was under contract to review. It found three environmental assessments, prepared by Helix during the time she worked there, for projects her husband took to court. Although she was a project manager for Helix and was the primary author on several reports, her name was not listed specifically on any of the three.

A larger issue

For much of the time Briggs has sued government agencies and developers in Southern California alleging CEQA violations, Cacciatore’s employer was on contract to help at least 15 of those same agencies comply with the same law.

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Commenting on Briggs’ and Cacciatore’s professional relationship, legal ethicist McIntyre said, “I suspect that if this was revealed to the lawyers representing the port, they’d say there was no way they could have known this. Because it just wouldn’t have been obvious.”

He’s right.

Bolduc, the port’s acting president and CEO, was surprised to learn of the connection between Briggs and Cacciatore and said his senior staff had no knowledge of it.

“That’s not something that anybody would have thought to look into, or guess would be a factor, in awarding these contracts,” he said.

“Depending on what we learn, we’ll certainly evaluate to see if there are any safeguards we can build into our systems.”

Greg Shields, chief executive of Project Design Consultants, an engineering company that works with Helix and has been deeply involved in projects for the port and city of San Diego, said he did not know about Briggs’ wife.

Shields said Helix does “lots and lots of environmental documents that touch many projects,” and it “seems like there might be an opportunity for him to get inside information.”.

“It puts the document in question,” he said.

Shields said when Project Design works with Helix, which acquired its environmental division in 2007, he doesn’t know the names of all personnel. There is a chance Cacciatore worked on the same projects as his company, he said, but he doesn’t have “any concerns about any work that we’ve ever done.”

A bright line

The repercussions for Briggs would depend on what, if any, information he learned from his wife that could aid in his lawsuits, McIntyre and Arons said.

“If the port could contend that she was privy to confidential information, and it was being passed on, he would be disqualified from his lawsuit,” McIntyre said. “It’s a bright line in California — that you cannot get your hands on the other side’s information.”

When asked how it could affect cases already settled, he paused.

“No court has had to grapple with that yet,” McIntyre said. He suggested a court could order a lawyer to pay back the fees earned as a result of a lawsuit.

“I can see a court going there,” he said.

Arons, the other ethicist, said there were so many issues to consider, and so many unknowns, that he couldn’t say whether Briggs’ actions could be unethical, but that “there’s certainly a lot of smoke.”

“This raises enough questions that somebody better be checking this out,” he said.